What Everyone Seems to be Missing

This is about the paid 90 boost. There were rumors late last year about massive ban-waves incoming on blizz devs twitter feeds. Most botters are to lazy to do things in game and also buy the game when it goes to special pricing. What happens is that once one account is banned under a bnet account you can't risk ANY inappropriate activity(for the most part :/) on that account(72 hour bans for botting included). After the ban-wave a month-ish ago there were a few comments from blizz devs that indicated a decent percent of the player-base (literally saying that they were shocked and saddened at the numbers) had been banned. So you have a large part of your player-base with extra keys on a bnet account but to lazy to pay the 15 bucks to switch back to the account now that the RaF part is dead. Tbh reading that back sounds like a bit of a stretch but considering their comments on the numbers banned and the fact that the boost is to current cap and separately purchasable and being released so soon after the ban-wave and sososo far ahead of when WoD will be dropping that it makes a pretty compelling argument for why they were willing to offer it.

On a separate note I have no doubt that the general idea behind WoD being to bring back the best of the past with the conveniences of today could bring back quite a few old players in with the right incentive(the boost/model revamp) is important. Being offered now though is too much to ignore. ZOMG last second extra thought. They are offering this right before the next pvp season(most of the botters were abusing an interrupt feature and they weren't originally going to have another season) and there is the catch up mechanic for pvp.

pre edit: sorry i don't have the sources for all the stuff referenced but if you normally read the most recent posts you will know what i'm referring to. Finding it all would take a while but from the time i spend on anything related to hacking/botting(ie i lurk a lot on "those" sites that i can't directly name) out of pure curiosity has given me a decent insiders perspective on what these players are doing.

sorry for the confusion i was trying not to post a wall of text. TL : DR considering the other thread quoting their stance on pay to level a year ago I believe the lvl 90 boost(being released this early) is at least partially influenced by the recent ban-wave.

To further iterate on how little a lot of what i said was fleshed out. There are a lot of standard ways that most people that hack wow do things. A lot of this leads to the majority of them coming back if offered the right incentive, but also being less likely to ever bot again as most "casual" botters have extra accounts on the same bnet account that got banned.

sorry for the confusion i was trying not to post a wall of text. TL : DR considering the other thread quoting their stance on pay to level a year ago I believe the lvl 90 boost(being released this early) is at least partially influenced by the recent ban-wave.

The level 90 boost comes from them wanting to give people a free level 90 with WoD to entice former players or new players who didn't want to be looking at weeks of leveling before they could get to WoD content to buy WoD.
But if they did that and didn't sell boosts separately they'd end up having people buying multiple copies of the whole battle chest and doing account transfers to get instant level 90s. So rather than make people jump through hoops (and likely to avoid having to share the revenue with retailers) they decided to just sell the extra boosts themselves.

sorry for the confusion i was trying not to post a wall of text. TL : DR considering the other thread quoting their stance on pay to level a year ago I believe the lvl 90 boost(being released this early) is at least partially influenced by the recent ban-wave.

I think, if anything, having banned account users buy 90s is nothing more than a side effect of their attempt to draw upon ~8 year's worth of retired WoW players.

The point I think everybody is missing is "why pay full price right now for an expansion that won't release until fall/Xmas (6+ months)"?

It's almost as if Blizz knew there would be a massive delay that could hurt subs, so they wanted to guarantee sales right now.

anyone who didnt see this, needs their internet glasses checked. This is pure genious

Last year is was we got diablo three free to keep us around. This time, they got us to pay to keep us around (not me, though)

It's actually both laughable and pathetic.

It was never Hardcore Vs Casual. It was Socialites Vs. Solo players

Originally Posted by ringpriest

World of Warcraft started life as a Computer Roleplaying Game, where part of the fun of the game experience was pretending to be your character. Stuff like applying poisons and eating food enhanced the verisimilitude of the experience of playing a fantasy character in another world. Now that game has changed to become a tactical arcade lobby game.

Reading this post gave me a headache, man OP you need to work on clearly writing out what you are trying to convey.

I don't think the 90 boost is spurred by the wave of bans that Blizzard did. The point of the 90 boost is to allow people to, one, get to current content so they can play with friends, or two, give players an option to pay money to get a max level alt. Sure it's breeding a lot of negativity in the community, but it's been implemented, but not for the reasons you put forth.

THIS IS FACT - one of the biggest reasons old players always remark about why they don´t come back is they don´t want to buy a new expansion, then spend a month leveling through old content before they can play with their friends. You go back through any gaming forum and you see that sentiment all over the place. Adding the lvl 90 boost is a great way to allow those players to instantly experience the new content right away with their friends and not feel like they are behind

THIS IS FACT - It took about 5 mins at Blizzcon for a player to say ´but if you do that, can´t I just buy another box, boost a character, then transfer that character to my main account?' and Blizzard quickly realized that people would do that.

THIS IS FACT - Doing character account transfers is a manual thing. A Blizzard employee literally has to move the character from one account to the other on a case-by-case basis. By Blizzard allowing you to purchase a lvl-90 boost directly, it is now completely automated, and thus cuts down on the work of their support staff. It is a win-win.. Blizzard doesn´t have to use support staff to do the manual account transfers, and players don´t have to mess around with buy expansions, doing the boost, and then waiting for support staff to more their character to their main account.

THIS IS FACT - When Blizzard put pre-orders up this week, they ANNOUNCED that the expansion wouldn´t be coming until Fall. Nobody needs to buy the expansion now. Who does it target? Not us players... it targets those returning players who quit in BC. Now not only do they get to level through WoD with their friends when it is released, but they also get to see MoP endgame content when it is relevant.

Of course Blizzard wants to make money, of course they want old players from BC to come back and play the game. I am not sure why kids think that any incentive that a company uses to get players to come back is some type of dishonest scheme.

Also, your point about banned accounts is absolutely stupid. Blizzard does not want those players back because they result in excessive customer service problems. What you may not realize is that those accounts are mostly hacked accounts. Not only does Blizzard support staff have to spend a lot of time verifying the exploits, but those accounts also generate a lot of GM tickets.. The cost of the customer service money Blizzard spends on those accounts is probably more than the profit they get from them being active. Blizzard also knows that those account negatively impact other normal accounts and ingame economies. After reading your post ( barely ) it is pretty obvious you might have trouble following a reasonable chain of though.. but there is just too much negative about bot accounts to even think Blizzard would consider ´churning´ them as a reasonable business decision. They cost Blizzard a ton in support staff, and they hurt honest players.

sorry for the confusion i was trying not to post a wall of text. TL : DR considering the other thread quoting their stance on pay to level a year ago I believe the lvl 90 boost(being released this early) is at least partially influenced by the recent ban-wave.

To further iterate on how little a lot of what i said was fleshed out. There are a lot of standard ways that most people that hack wow do things. A lot of this leads to the majority of them coming back if offered the right incentive, but also being less likely to ever bot again as most "casual" botters have extra accounts on the same bnet account that got banned.

anyone who didnt see this, needs their internet glasses checked. This is pure genious

Last year is was we got diablo three free to keep us around. This time, they got us to pay to keep us around (not me, though)

It's actually both laughable and pathetic.

What are you talking about? You can buy the expansion now if you like and then unsubscribe for the summer. Hell, four months would pay for the expansion and more. You'll still have your boost available when you come back if you have the expansion licensed. Or unsubscribe now and buy the expansion in September or whenever. Same deal.

You might want to check your own internet glasses. Calendar too on the annual pass since that wasn't last year.

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I think you missed the part where they want people who buy the expansion to be able to experience it instantly with the free 90, instead of going through outdated content first. They put it in the shop because they have the tech and can make an extra buck.